Pennsylvania Sentencing Data, 1996 (ICPSR 3062)

Principal Investigator(s):Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing

Summary:

The Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing is a legislative agency
of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Commission develops sentencing
guidelines for judges to use when sentencing felony and misdemeanor offenses.
The judges report sentences to the Commission on a Guideline Sentence Form.
This data collection reflects all felonies and misdemeanors reported to the
Commission that were sentenced during calendar year 1996. The data are
contained in two files. Part 1, Records Data, provide... (more info)

The Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing is a legislative agency
of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The Commission develops sentencing
guidelines for judges to use when sentencing felony and misdemeanor offenses.
The judges report sentences to the Commission on a Guideline Sentence Form.
This data collection reflects all felonies and misdemeanors reported to the
Commission that were sentenced during calendar year 1996. The data are
contained in two files. Part 1, Records Data, provides information on
each offender, including rudimentary demographic characteristics and prior
offense history. Part 2, Offense Data, contains information on each
offense, including the statutory citation for the offense, the Offense
Gravity Score assigned by the Commission, the offender's Prior Record Score,
and the sentence given the offender.

A downloadable version of data for this study is available however, certain identifying information in the downloadable version may have been masked or edited to protect respondent privacy. Additional data not included in the downloadable version are available in a restricted version of this data collection. For more information about the differences between the downloadable data and the restricted data for this study, please refer to the codebook notes section of the PDF codebook. Users interested in obtaining restricted data must complete and sign a Restricted Data Use Agreement, describe the research project and data protection plan, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Dataset(s)

WARNING: This study is over 150MB in size and may take several minutes to download on a typical internet connection.

Universe:
All felony and misdemeanor offenses sentenced in
Pennsylvania in 1996.

Data Types:
administrative records data

Data Collection Notes:

(1) The two data files should not be used separately
for analysis. The data files can be linked using the Commission ID
(CID). In the Records Data (Part 1), the CID is unique. In the Offense
Data (Part 2), one CID can have multiple offenses. (2) The unit of
analysis is determined by the user but could include: (a) Judicial
proceeding: a proceeding in which all offenses for which the offender
was convicted were pending before the court for sentencing at the same
time. (b) Transaction: a crime or crimes committed by an
offender at a single time or in temporally continuous actions that were
part of the same episode, event, or incident, or which were conspiracy
and the offense that was conspired to. There can be multiple
transactions within one judicial proceeding. (c) Offense: there can be
multiple offenses within one transaction. (3) These data represent the
public version of the 1996 sentencing data for which three
confidential variables (offender's name, Social Security number,
judge's name) were removed from the dataset before submission to ICPSR
and three additional variables (docket number, offense tracking
number, and state identification number) were blanked by
ICPSR. Information on obtaining the full dataset is provided in the
codebook. (4) The codebook and data collection instruments are
provided by ICPSR as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file. The PDF
file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be
accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat
Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is
provided on the ICPSR Web site.

Methodology

Sample:
All cases reported on Guideline Sentence Forms sent to the
Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing by judges.

Data Source:

Guideline Sentence Forms submitted by judges to the
Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2000-12-04

Version History:

2006-03-30 File CB3062.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.